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Month: June 2014

After the sleet at the beginning of this year, satellite imagery shows large brown patches of the land, where last year they were green and covered in vegetation. To assess the extent of the damage, we went to the most affected area.

From the images bellow it is clearly visible that the only things still standing are bare tree trunks without any canopy. It is slowly starting to regrow where the branches were broken off, but it will take at least 5-10 years for canopy to grow to its previous state. Many man hours were and will still be spent on cleaning the undergrowth to prevent the European spruce bark beetle from destroying the remaining coniferous trees.

In the last few days three new (AR2080, AR2082, AR2085) large sunspot groups have materialized. All three regions have unstable magnetic fields that pose a threat for significant eruptions. There is high possibility for M-class and X-class flares in the following days.